this would only happen to me

Perhaps you may recognize the pipes and flexible tubing? Or maybe the dust bunnies? Yep, this is a picture of what is currently living behind my washing machine. Or what was living there until last night anyway. Any idea what the bright pink item is at the centre of the screen?

Three days ago I lost my Kobo. I should say that I only realized three days ago that I lost it; how long it has actually been missing I’m not exactly sure. I have been a begrudging convert to the world of e-reading. I love the convenience of being able to put a 500 page hard cover (or ten of them for that matter) onto this tiny little piece of technology and carrying it around in my purse. However, I still prefer books. Real books. Books I can smell and run my hands across the pages and stack on my shelf. Because of this, I don’t use my Kobo very often. Shhh, don’t tell my husband – it was a gift from him. Although truth be told, he knows that 80% of the time I’m carrying around a real book with me and the Kobo is living on a shelf so it’s not like I’m trying to hide the fact or anything.

Anyway, it’s probably been a couple of months since I read anything on the Kobo but the other day I started looking around for it because there’s a book on there that I want to read. A book that incidentally, I would prefer to read in ‘real book’ format but there are about 40 people ahead of me on the hold list at the library. Of course, now that I’m looking for it I can’t find it. Every other day when I’m not looking for it, I see it everywhere. This is my life.

There are few things that drive me crazier than not being able to find something. I become obsessed. First I look in all of the places that the item ‘should’ be and then I throw logic out the window and start looking in all the places I know it won’t be but I look anyway. My mind starts whirling and I begin to concoct elaborate stories wherein one of my children must have taken the item and hid it somewhere, or thrown it out in the trash, or flushed it down the toilet. Or maybe the cat did something with it. Or maybe there really are little people living in the house who borrow things.

So this is what I have been doing for the last three days in my attempt to find my Kobo. I try to do it in a very stealth-like manner so my husband won’t notice. Because if he notices then it inevitably leads to the “what did you lose now?” comment which I try to avoid at all costs. I lose things more often than I should, I admit it. That doesn’t mean I like it when someone else points it out to me though.

After ransacking my office at work yesterday on the off-chance that I left my Kobo there, which I doubted but at that point but I was running out of options, I came home to an empty house, free of kids and husband, and I took the opportunity to continue my search undisturbed. I decided to look in all of the obvious spots one more time – in case I somehow missed the bright-pink object the first four times.

One the Kobo’s usual homes is on a shelf in the laundry room. As the laundry room is generally considered ‘my territory’ (whether I like it or not), I often leave things on the shelves in there because I know it is unlikely that someone will venture in and start looking around, therefore (in theory) reducing the likelihood of something of mine going missing from there. I had already looked on the shelves three or four times but this time it occurred to me that maybe it had somehow fallen off the shelf. And, if it fell off the shelf there’s only one place it could go.

Behind the washing machine.

I crawled on top of the machine and I thought I could see a small pink corner peeking out from under one of the pipes but it was pretty dark so I couldn’t be sure. I ran down to the basement to get the emergency flashlight which was, of course, out of batteries. I ran upstairs to the bedroom to get the back-up emergency flashlight which was, you guessed it, also out of batteries. FYI, if there’s ever an emergency, don’t come to my house because we’ll be wandering aimlessly through the house in the dark trying to find batteries for the emergency flashlights.

So I did the only thing that any self-respecting-in-need-of-light person would do – I fired up the screen on my ipod touch and used it to see behind the washing machine. Isn’t technology amazing? And that confirmed it, my Kobo had officially been found…behind the washing machine…covered in dust bunnies…under some scary looking tubes and pipes. Now the question was, how was I going to get it out?

Laying on top of the washing machine and reaching down behind it with a pair of salad tongs did not work. Taping the salad tongs to a wooden spoon also did not work. Finally I unscrewed the handle from a broom and used it to push the Kobo far enough to the side of the washing machine that I could grab it and pull it out, dust bunnies and all.

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5 Responses

Using your iPod as emergency flashlight — brilliant! And constructing emergency tools to get the Kobo out from behind the washing machine…that’s what I call resourceful. But I am consumed by curiosity: How did the Kobo get there? Carried there by the cat? Kidnapped by leprechauns on St. Patrick’s Day? I wonder. ;-)

The best I can figure, the slamming of the garage door (which is about 2 feet from the shelf) must have caused the Kobo to fall. Either that or my cat read the letter I wrote to him (Dear Mr. Cat – earlier post) and got pissed at me and dumped the Kobo. Probably 50/50.